Week 2 - Going Okayer

The house dynamic is so weird now. Like, nobody is sad because Rippa's not gone permanently, but The Fury has gone FULL LASSIE on the babies and feels the need to be with them all the time, circling, nudging, keeping them from leaving, etc. It's kind of annoying. We used to have to yell at Rippa for this and now it's Fury. She seems a little lost.  Also, the house is so clean. I don't know why. She must just roll in the dirt all day and bring it inside.

Anyway . . . Friday rolled around and I made my second call to Sherry about Rips. My cell phone reception is bad and I tried to play it off like it wasn't, but I might have missed a bit with her as a result. We bought a booster because it's seriously impeding my ability to work these days and it's all fixed now. :)

Anyway, so I am feeling somewhat better about my own handling hearing about how it's going with Sherry. I thought for sure she'd be like, "Well, here's someone who knows what she's doing, let's kick some ass," but she's giving her all the trouble she gave me.

Sherry says that it can be through bad handling as well as some of what she's seeing is just in them. Specifically - her top is flat. I think this is because of bad habits and what not and obviously Sherry hasn't seen how she started, but she has a theory that it's conformational/genetic and that she's been breeding away from it. She says, "think about it like a quarter horse is fast on the straight and a thoroughbred is fast on the curves." It's an interesting perspective that I literally had not even considered. Time to do some research!

Anyway, since she is her mother's daughter, and I trained them both, it's kinda hard to say right now what is her and what is me. People ask me if sending her to Sherry is something I regret because she's not coming along that fast - no. I have realistic expectations of what one can do with a dog this far along in training with my handling. What I DO know is that Sherry knows what she's doing and I can never make excuses for myself or her - what she is and what Sherry can get out of her will be what she is. And if I choose to breed her and who I choose to breed her to will be well informed. I care very much about the path I have in this breed, and that's invaluable.

Anyway, she says that Rippa really needs a lot of round pen work to get her habits better. She didn't take her "out" or much of anything, and if timing wasn't right, she'd take it out on stock, which I knew. I quote, "she is a heat seeking missile." Yup.

The big theme of my bad handling is that when she's bad, because I couldn't emotionally or expediently fix it, I'd lay her down and get my bearing, and so Sherry's having to stop her from laying down but instead fix her own mess and not lose the stock. The goal is to get her to be rounder and move out wider. She's not that naturally a wide working dog, but combined with her fast and intense up the butt style, she has a lot of power and needs to learn to work with it.

Basically, what I'm getting from Sherry is what I knew: that she needed a smaller arena with more dog broke stock to work some of this out. Going from a round pen to a huge area just didn't work for us and while no one's handing me a gold star for doing what I have with her, I'm giving myself one.

It's been interesting hearing that she's not handling pressure in alleys and tight spaces because that's exactly what I've been doing with her. That and just taking sheep for walks. Sherry says it's like she's never had that. Maybe it's a new handler and new situation, or maybe I was bandaiding bad foundations and it worked "enough" for us.

She thinks what little trialing I did that made her be mechanical didn't hurt things. She was like, "So THAT'S why when I told you to just let her work, you wouldn't." That this week is all about working her with loose reins and earn trust to take care of her stock. "You can't work this kind of dog with your guard up," she told me.

If you have followed my path with her, you know this has been a major issue with me. Stockdog training is so hard, but it is also therapeutic. Rippa is truly a gift. I have to learn to work her and all my future partners with my guard down and my trust high.

I miss my brown dog. I hope she's having a nice time.

Week 1 - Going okay

I have a couple thoughts and I told Sherry I took notes, and what do I do here except write down my notes.

But first -

A week ago we took the Woods and their latest litter of pups out to work ducks for the first time, and it hadn't occurred to me just how important experience on the kind of stock you have really is. Like, there were just some tips I had about them (like too much pressure and they'll just sit down and more won't help) made me feel good about getting the ducks in the first place. I know when I have my own sheep and cattle, my stockmanship will skyrocket. I'm really good at chicken herding, too, and it becomes really obvious when people stand in the hole I'm trying to send them through. :)

We dropped Rips off at Sherry's, and no I did not cry. I am 100% sure she's going to love it - she's a ranch dog at heart and likes structure and knowing what to expect and pretty much her favorite things to do are work and eat and that's what she'll do there. Sherry gave us a little tour and showed how much of her property was under water. She gave me shit for Rippa's pink collar - but we always got her a bright pink collar because that's what Y liked, so that's what we got this round because she wanted a plain buckle.

On the way home we visited the MacRoberts' and saw her brother, Reid. Rippa is a little thing. Bigger than her mom with more bone, but she's a dead-on 18" high and 32 lbs in peak shape. Reid was neither short nor light on bone. He was great. I'm proud of him. I wish his owners showed a little interest in at least testing him on livestock because they kept him intact and it would be cool to have that blood down the line, but I'm not going to breed to a farm dog that just hangs out just because I am sentimental. He's still so cute and he loved his mama.

Back to the issue at hand: I'll say this - I'm so sorry that Sherry's so far away. I had a wonderful mentorship and experience with Kathy, but the natural enthusiasm Sherry has and how she explains things resonates with me. Every time she tells me something, even if it's me overhearing her talking to others at a trial, I learn something. I think a lot of the stockdog people tend to be a little close-mouthed and she's enthusiastic about expressing her thoughts and teaching people and it stuck with me as we drove away. I remember feeling this way about the single time I took a lesson with her and the Fury, but I just can't give up that kind of time. Maybe I can as the kids get older . . . I know lots of people drive a lot farther to get to her.

Anyway, I felt really good about leaving her there - I'm comfortable describing her as clearly the best handler in Aussie trialing history - I've watched enough of her to say this. She has finesse and she knows how to get a lot out of her dogs, even if they themselves aren't doing the best job at times. It's not hard to be proud, almost, that she was willing to take Rippa in. It feels like a privilege.

I really thought Rippa would immediately settle in and forget all about us and start being super cute for Sherry and not try all her stupid things she does to me. She told me not to call for a week, though, because dogs take a while to adjust.

Huzzy got home from a meeting today and looked at me sheepishly and said . . . "So, could you call Sherry?"

And it had been seven days, so we did.

I guess Rippa was actually loyal to us and spent the first couple days looking up the hill to find her family and trying to escape Sherry. After a while, she stopped doing that and got to working, but Sherry got to see all the bad habits she'd picked up from me.

And the nice thing was, Sherry referred to them that way. It's not inherently Rippa that she is naughty, it's that she needs good timing and someone to trust her or she takes it out on the stock or quits and Sherry recognized that straight away. She told me would get corrected at the top and just lay down and she'd have to get her going again because I've been stopping the action for so long. That I need to correct and move on. I asked her how she made her keep working because I've had so much trouble with that and she gave me a great tip:

The dogs hear really well, so you tap the ground with a long stick away from them and move it closer and closer. If they let the stick hit them, that's on them, but eventually they'll get up and move well before it and it makes a good training tool. So Rips basically couldn't quit because of the round pen and the stick pushing her.

It was like hearing Kathy with me and The Fury. Rippa's easier to handle, but if you remember, I started with the fear and baggage of The Fury and I didn't breed an easier dog on stock - so it was a delicate balance for me to  trust and not trust.

She told me she's taking out all the mechanics and just putting a steady on her and she hasn't been able to get her out of the round pen yet, but she thinks this week it'll go. AKA, she's changing her habits fast enough to be able to trust her in a larger spot and move on.

I had a feeling that Sherry would have a good time training her when Rippa got on board - but you never know, you always think your dog is cool - and so far, she has said some nice things about her - that she's smart, and maybe not real square or finnessy worker, but she is basically how Zippin (one of her best cowdogs) would work if she'd been trained by a novice handler. That's a feather in my cap for sure. That's a much bigger compliment that she told me casually than I'd have expected to hear.

I want to stab the ground with the fact that after something like 15 years of this I'm still a novice handler. And that some of the things that I messed up in the Fury I messed up in Rippa. But, this is why I am doing this. Because I'll NEVER be a great handler (my temperament alone makes me bad at this), but I'm excited to reinforce what I thought, which is that I have a great little dog. And that's all I want, really: to produce great working dogs and to keep learning.

We miss her, but I definitely think this was a great idea. I'm going to be curious to see how I adapt my handling to her new habits and hopefully can document what she looks like after Sherry handles her. It'll definitely be job 1 to be up to the handling she needs when she comes back. This investment is soooo worth it. I'm so excited.

Off to judge/announce a point/time trial!

Rippa goes to camp

Well, when I logged in, I thought I lost a ton of posts, but no, I really haven't written anything in this for over a YEAR.

The Squees and Rippa watch the ducks.

Because I was pregnant with twins. And then I had twins. And then I went once to sheep at Stephanie's and realized that the sheep stopped being used to my dogs and were too light for me to work without being consistent.

Which left the ducks. But even then, I haven't given up my day jobs and I added twins. So . . . not a ton of work going on here. Rippa's been really cute on ducks except when I brought the woods out to test their puppies and she was like, "People, watching? HAHAHAHAH!" I'm working on getting access to sheep again, but they're "on hold" for the moment.

And all I've done is think about getting back into it. Stuff just isn't working out with time and stock availability. I don't even really want to try too hard because even if I get stock RIGHT now, my ability to be consistent is gone.

Whining to some friends yielded an idea - what if you sent Rippa off for finishing? In my world this wasn't okay. You do it yourself, you slacker.

And then people are like, "But Kristin. Twins. Work. People are going to understand. And you'll be a better handler because you'll learn to worry about that more than what the dog's doing." It's true. Before kids, I spent easily 10 hours a week on stuff and still it wasn't ideal. Now it's like . . . 1 hour a week if I'm lucky. Why miss out on the experience when I could have the best of all worlds?

The Fury's face when I told her Rippa was going away for a while.

So, I asked Sherry Baker, nervously, if she was up for it. And she was! So tomorrow, Rippa goes to stockdog camp. I have no idea what to expect except I worry that I'm going to be annoying to her.

I'm pretty excited about this. I think Rippa will like it, all the structure and clear handling from someone who knows what she's doing (I'd argue the best handler in the country for Aussies). And I'm excited to see what she gets out of her. I've been thinking seriously about breeding her, but I really want to be in a place of KNOWING what she can do and not promising something I can't back up to the people buying pups. This is a great way to find out because it's none of that, "if only I was a better handler" crap. Obviously, she has tons of baggage from bad handling and inconsistency through the years, and she's old and has bad habits, but I still think it's gonna be great.

Anyway, so she goes to Sherry's tomorrow. We're loading up the clown car with two dogs, two babies, me and the huz and our nanny who's never been to the snow so we invited her along for fun.

Added bonus - Rippa's just growing back in her coat after blowing it.
She's gonna be SOOOOO pretty when we see her next.

Sherry asked me for a list of her working commands. I sat down to do it and felt so smug for myself because it was such a long list:

Rippa’s Working Commands

·         Come

·         Down: lay down and stay down

·         Stay

·         Stand

·         No: stop what you’re doing

·         Yes/good: keep doing what you’re doing

·         Okay: do whatever it is you think you should be doing instead of what I just told you (a release that lets her do what she thinks she should do)

·         Get or get behind: stay behind your stock or me depending on who she’s behind

·         With me: stay with you but don’t worry about “heeling”

·         Find heel: worry about heeling

·         Get around: get around which ever direction you want and bring them to me – she cuts pretty tight and fast at the top

·         Way to

·         Go by

·         Out: keep circling but get wider around the stock

·         Back: switch directions on your circle (also works as a “get” on cattle)

·         Walk up

·         There: turn into the stock and walk up on them

·         Easy or “hey”: slow down

·         Beat it: get out of contact with the stock or leave

·         That’ll do: stop working and come to me or get off the stock

·         Hup – jump up into my arms

·         Load – get in the truck/quad

·         Crate – get in crate

·         Kennel – get in kennel

·         Leash – present your neck for leash on or off

·         Find your spot – put her somewhere on a stay and if she gets up, tell her to find her spot and she’ll go back to it

·         Squirrel – go kill the squirrels J

M